1905. 



245 



NOTES. 



BOTANY. 



The Numbering of the Botanical Divisions of Ireland. 



In contributing a few words to the discussion which has been carried 

 on under this heading in the September and October isvsues of the Irish 

 Naturalist, I would first of all draw attention to the heading itself. It is 

 decidedly misleading, since the real question at issue is not the number- 

 ing of the Botanical County Divisions of Ireland but the numbering of 

 the Botanical County Divisions of the British Isles considered as forming 

 a single botanical region. The numbering of the county-divisions of 

 Ireland on a rational system is happily an accomplished fact. The 

 scheme of division and the sequence of the numbers proposed by iMr. 

 Praeger in this Journal in 1896, and used by him five years later in his 

 Irish Topographical Botany, is now accepted by Irish botanists as quite 

 adequate for the purpose in view. That purpose is to exhibit the 

 distribution of Irish plants in Ireland in much fuller topographical 

 detail than was admissible under the scheme of District Divisions adopted 

 in Cybele Hibernica. A scheme accepted by Irish botanists as the best 

 possible for their own island must of course stand, even should it fail to 

 meet with the approval of British botanists, whose acquaintance with 

 Irish botany and topography must be comparatively limited. 



When Mr. Waddell {supra p. 197) says that Mr. Praeger made " a 

 great mistake " in not making " his numbers run consecutively with 

 those of Great Britain," he seems to me to overlook the primary purpose 

 of the scheme of sub-division and numbering he finds fault with. When 

 he proceeds farther onto say that "it would be useful if a Catalogue 

 were issued of British Flowering Plants," he evidently means a Catalogue 

 of the Flowering Plants of the British Isles, which is a very different 

 thing. After all, Ireland is geographically no less than financially a 

 *' separate" entity from Great Britain, and there is little reason to 

 suppose that the fashion of " thinking imperially " will ever become so 

 ingrained with Irish botanists as to lead them to confound their own 

 island with the more important island across the water. 



The difficulty of devising a satisfactory scheme of numbering for the 

 botanical divisions of Great Britain and Ireland, viewed together as a 

 single botanical region, is a very real one, and is ably stated by Mr. 

 Waddell. Indeed, I think it is overstated, since the plan of numbering 

 suggested b}' Mr. Praeger {supra p. 220) for use, when it is desired to 

 treat Ireland as a part of the botanical region of the British Isles, seems 

 to me to offer an adequate solution. An even simpler one might be 

 suggested. Let the numbers in the proposed Catalogue for the British 

 Isles have the contraction Br. set in front of the series of numbers 

 denoting the British distribution, and Ir. in front of those denoting the 

 Irish distribution. By this plan it is possible at once to avoid all 

 ambiguity, and to save Ihe space which might be occupied by th^ 



